We stand now at the beginning of the age of robots. There are some 25,000 robots in the world and it is estimated that by 1990 there will be about 115,000.
What makes them important, even in their present simplicity, is the kind of work they can do, now or soon. They can take on dangerous tasks or withstand dangerous conditions, which human beings would much prefer to avoid and yet which, till now, they have been forced to engage in. Robots will be working in space, in mines, under water; they will deal with explosives, radioactive material, poisonous chemicals, pathogenic bacteria, unusual temperatures, pressures, heights and so on.
Most of all, they can do work which, while not physically dangerous, is so repetitious and dull that it stultifies and debases any human mind that must engage in it for long periods of time.
This mind-damaging work is just right for robots, which can engage in it indefinitely, without getting bored or sullen; they can also do it more reliably and correctly. As a result, human beings, liberated from such subhuman work, will be free to turn to more creative endeavors.
And yet, before we grow too happy over this prospect, let us remember that to be "liberated from an undesirable job" might well be translated into "thrown out of work." A job might seem undesirable to someone viewing it from outside, but to the person working at it, it is a livelihood. The robot brings with it, in other words, the threat of technological unemployment and with that, the loss of economic security and the disappearance of self-respect.
One might argue that technological advance has always been with us and that history shows that such advance produces many more jobs than it destroys. The coming of the automobile put a number of blacksmiths and buggy manufacturers out of business and decreased the need for whips and hay. It created, however, a far greater number of automobile-related jobs, and vastly expanded and broadened the need for gasoline, rubber and highways.
And yet there are dangers more dramatic than that of unemployment. Might not human beings be killed by robots? Might robots be designed and programmed to be warriors? Might the machines of destruction that now fight our battles be made the more horrible with the aid of computerization?
To be sure, human beings have turned almost every technological advance to the service of the destructive impulse. But mankind has already brought war-making powers to the point where civilization can be destroyed in a day. We can't save ourselves in this respect by banning robots. All over the world, people fear war, and this general fear, which grows yearly, may succeed in putting an end to war -- in which case there will be no warrior robots.
But let us consider still another and perhaps the most extreme of the potential dangers of robots, and of computers generally. Robots will be made ever more sophisticated and more capable; they will be designed with cleverly manipulable hands and various senses; they may even eventually be constructed with the capacity for something like reason. Might they not take over more and more jobs, more complicated jobs, more creative jobs?
Might it not be that human beings will have to be shifted from one job to another, seeking always something that robots cannot do better, and finding that robots will inexorably follow them to higher and higher levels until there is nothing at all left for humans to do? Will human beings be forced into idleness and boredom, dying off for sheer lack of challenge to give life meaning? In short, would Homo sapiens become first obsolete, then extinct; and would the robots take over as Homo superior?
It is possible to wonder, in a cynical way, if this would not be a logical and rational development after all. If eventually robots are devised that are stronger and more intelligent than human beings and if they are given a better sense of social obligations than we have, shouldn't they replace us as a matter of justice?
But these are dyspeptic and unpleasant imaginings. There is much that is, has been and will continue to be decent and wonderful about humans, and with the help of robots -- and computers, generally -- we may yet save ourselves and the world.
Besides, although we might in despair try to reconcile ourselves to robotic replacement, it may be that this is impossible. The human brain is not easy to match, let alone surpass.
What a computer is designed to do is, essentially, arithmetic. Any problem, however seemingly complex, that can somehow be broken down into a well-defined series of arithmetical operations can be solved by a computer. That the computer can amaze us with its capabilities arises not out of the nature of the arithmetical operations it can handle, but out of the fact that it can perform these operations in thousand-millionths of a second, and without error.
The human brain, on the other hand, is incredibly poor at arithmetic. It needs, and has always needed, outside help to solve the simplest problems. We began by counting on our fingers, and have moved on to better things only with the help of the abacus, pen and paper, Arabic numerals, logarithms, slide rules, mechanical calculators and, eventually, computers.
The business of the human brain is not number manipulation at all. It is, and has always been, that of judgment and creative thought: the trick of coming to a reasonable conclusion on the basis of insufficient evidence; the knack of being able to think philosophically, insightfully, fancifully, imaginatively; the ability to extract beauty, excitement and delight out of the world that surrounds us, and out of what we ourselves shape that, without us, would never exist.
Might we not, in the end, program robots to do such things? That would not be easy. To begin with, we don't know how we do them, so the problem of organizing robotic behavior to behave in human fashion would be difficult indeed.
Almost any human being, even those that seem very ordinary, can do something very well without knowing how he or she does it, and all these are human things that, perhaps, no robot will ever do. As a matter of showmanship we might eventually succeed in programming a robot to do something human in a rudimentary way -- but why bother when any human being can do it so much better?
No, if our technology is to bring about Homo superior, it may well be out of ourselves that it will arise. With newfound techniques of genetic engineering, we may well learn how to improve our brain and increase its efficiency, while we are also learning to increase the capabilities of robots. Indeed, our computers will help us improve our brains, and our improved brains will help us better our robot designs, in a leapfrog effect.
The end result will be that robots and human beings will continue to advance along parallel paths, with each doing in ever better fashion that which each is fitted to do. With our widely different talents, there will always be room for both human beings and robots. As cooperating allies rather than as competing foes, we can achieve an ever greater understanding of the behavior of the universe and of the wise use of its laws, and do far more together than either could possibly manage alone.